Gray Areas

Dividing lines, perceived faults
Deep wide fault lines splitting us apart
Unfriending friends that don’t agree
Political parties carve wooden hearts
Confusing our rights, hate speech flows free
Everyone is a traitor!
You’re either with us or against us
We’d rather build walls than mend fences
Everyone is wrong
Because fact is TRUMPed by opinions
Its black or its white
Its left or its right
There are no gray areas
Or middle ground
If you don’t stand for something
You stand for nothing
And you’re spineless
So just sit down.

PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK OF POETRY

Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”